The Wall
by IvoryAlchemist
Summary: The flames are all long gone, but the pain lingers on. Goodbye, blue sky. Goodbye, blue sky. Goodbye. [Grissom character study]


It was his laughter she would miss the most.

The sweet ripple of sound, matched by his dancing eyes and giddy smile. She watches now as he paces his territory, back and forth, back and forth, like a lion stalking out its prey. There are for wooden planks buried in the dirt so just the surface was visible, and a dark line drawn down each center. Gilbert was timing when the shadows hit the line.

She hears the sound of crumpling metal and turns, watching her husband collapse his cola in his hand.

"Are you still charting?" He asks, swinging to his feet and walking out over the hot beach sand.

Gilbert nods, pulling out a hand-drawn graph showing the progress of the shadows. "They're moving much later than last month," He comments, turning to show his father his work.

"They sure are. You know why?"

Again, Gilbert nods. "The seasons are changing. The sun sets earlier in wintertime and later in summer."

"Yeah, but do you know _why_?" His father pushes, and the small, scrappy boy narrows his eyes, thinking hard.

"Because the earth has moved on its axis in relation to the sun." His father supplies, and Gilbert nods. "Don't worry, son, you're only nine. You have many, many more years of school to get this all down," He crouched down on to his knees so he was level with his child. "Why, I bet when you come visit me when you're twenty you'll know more about this than I though anybody knew."

Gilbert smiled shyly, a half-smile, really, tilting his head down and giggling.

His father reaches out and rumples his curly hair, bleached from the unforgiving summer son. "Alright, professor, let's take a water break. I can't have you collapsing from heat exhaustion out here, can I?"

Gilbert runs ahead to the car, opening the trunk and reaching out for the cooler.

"Careful, sweetie!" Gilbert's mother cries, walking over quickly to her boy and helping him with the drinks. "There you go. One for you, one for me, and one for your daddy."

As Gilbert lumbered back to his father, loaded down with liquids, he called out, "Dad, how do you know so much?"

The forty-three year old man laughed. "Well, I didn't get a degree in structural engineering for nothing."

Gilbert handed him his beverage and opened his own. "I'm going to be a scientist, for sure," He chirped, plopping down in a lawn chair.

Mr. Grissom winced, reaching for his left shoulder. His wife frowned.

"Honey? Are you alright?" She stepped closer, and Gilbert looked over from his seat.

Mr. Grissom waved it off, his face still crumpled. "Fine, fine," He said breathlessly, shaking his head and forcing a smile. "I'm fine. Just got a pulled muscle, I'll bet."

Mrs. Grissom didn't look so sure.

_Daddy's gone across the ocean, _

_Leaving just a memory,_

_A snapshot in the family album. _

_Daddy, what else did you leave for me?_

_Daddy, whatcha leave behind for me? _

"Gilbert, do as I say and put your suit on!" Mrs. Grissom scolded her son, pulling the dark veil over her eyes.

Gilbert watched his mother with wonder and envy. Oh, what would he give to be a grown up? Oh, what would he give to no longer feel pain?

But he was an easy child, an obedient child and he slipped his suit jacket over his wiry shoulders.

Aunt Joanna poked her head through the door. "Are you ready, Elizabeth? The service is about to begin, honey," She said in her soothing southern drawl.

Elizabeth nodded sharply, reaching out for Gilbert's smooth young hand and walking bravely into the dome-shaped building.

She paused in the entranceway, looking out down the narrow path leading between the rows of seats. She pushed her chest out, squeezed her boy's hands and walked slowly toward the front.

Gilbert occupied his mind with counting; rapidly calculating the number of chairs in the church. _12 rows, 10 seats on each side… that makes 240 seats, total. _He focused his watery blue eyes on anything but the smooth, glossy coffin sitting proudly in the center of the room.

Elizabeth sat her son down in the outermost chair closest to the coffin, and sat herself besides him.

She leaned into his ear. "Remember, Gilbert, no talking whatsoever. No fidgeting. We're here to say…" She choked, her breath stopping in her tongues, "To say good-bye."

Just then, the preacher began his long, winding sermon, talking about heaven and death and love and healing, talking and talking and talking but never saying a word.

Gilbert closed his eyes and willed his ears to close, too.

_Mother, should I build a wall? _

_Mother, should I run for President? _

_Mother, should I trust the government? _

_Mother, will they put me in the firing line? _

_Is it just a waste of time?_

Mrs. Grissom slid the knife through her fingers, the cool hard steel, running it along the edge of the tough-skinned Avacado.

She never heard the scream, the bang, the snap. She never heard anything at all.

"Giiiil?" She no longer called him Gilbert as it was too hard to say. "Gil, come here!"

She looked over the counter. Her son never ignored his mother; he was a quiet, undemanding boy who knew how to follow orders.

Elizabeth set down the fruit and knife and wondered toward the backyard, where she saw him, sprawled on the ground.

She never heard the smacking of her feet on the pavement, never heard her own scream, never heard the rustle of clothing as she kneeled by her child's side.

She saw his face, his beautiful face spotted with blood and his arm, his beautiful arm bent hideously bent with blood and white, white bone jabbing out from under its cover.

She saw the flow of dark crimson under his body, she saw the 9-1-1 dialing under her fingertips, she saw the flashing lights of the ambulance.

"Ma'am, ma'am, were you watching him? Where was he? What happened?" She saw the policeman with his creased suit and hard eyes staring down at her.

"I… I caaaaanot hear yoooou… I am deeeeaffff…" She did not hear her words drawn out, she did not hear her shaking sobs, she did not hear the medic's shouts or neighbors gasps.

She did not even hear her son, his whimpered cry of, "Daddy, please…"

_I am just a new boy, _

_Stranger in this town. _

_Where are all the good times?_

_Who's gonna show this stranger around?_

Gilbert's first ever crush was on his sixth grade teacher. Her name was Ms. Carroll, she had wide dark eyes and curled brown hair, a huge smile and shapely hips.

"All right, children, tomorrow is Career Day. Who's going to bring their father in to tell us how they earn a living?"

Everybody always raised their hand except the small, shy boy on the edge of the back row.

"Gilbert? What about you?"

He swallowed thickly, torn between piecing together a shattered boyhood and the pull of adolescent lust.

He must speak but his tongue was frozen.

"Gilbert?"

Gilbert pretended he was deaf, blinked blankly like his mother did when he spoke to her from behind.

"Gilbert? Answer me now or you must sit up front!" Ms. Carroll was kind but she was ignorant. No measure of decency can cope with ignorance.

"Fine. Gilbert, come up to the front of the classroom at once."

He stood, shoulders slumped, and shuffled to the front row, sitting on outermost edge closest to the _(coffin) _teacher.

He closed his eyes and pretended not to hear.

Gilbert hated sitting in the front row.

_I don't need no walls around me. _

_And I don't need no drugs to calm me. _

_I have seen the writing on the wall. _

_Don't think I need any thing at all._

_No. Don't think I need anything at all. _

_All in all it was all just the bricks in the wall. _

_All in all it was all just the bricks in the wall. _

She always sat in the outermost edge of the front row, closest to the professor.

At first, Gilbert interpreted her constant questions as a challenge.

"You do know as much as you think you do, miss,"

And she leaned forward, letting her curls of hair brush the desktop and the curve of her shirt dip and expose her perky breasts,

"Then teach me."

He never once kissed her.

He never once touched her.

He never once spoke inappropriately to her.

He was civil, polite, friendly and professional. But that doesn't mean he didn't _think _about things…

"I don't like talking about my father," She mumbled into a mug of coffee on a sweet San Francisco afternoon.

"Neither do I."

She reached out, brushed her fingers over his cheek. "You don't like talking about anything personal, do you?" She smiled, brightening the whole damn coffee shop with her viberence. "I used to hate it when people would ask me questions about my past. I still do."

Gilbert took her hand then, leaned forward so they were breathing one another's air. "We have a lot in common."

She was still grinning, she leaned in farther. "I know."

He hated listening to her. She sounded so much like him, so much like he remembered him to be.

_Watch it son, watch the shadows, watch them closely._

That pain still radiated through him now, and he imagined his own arteries clogging with grief.

Though no test could define it or doctor diagnose it, Gilbert was deaf.

Because the only sound his ears ever learned to hear was the sound of his father's voice.

Because the only sound his ears had never learned to hear was the sound of happiness calling.

_Goodbye, cruel world, I'm leaving you today. _

_Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. _

_Goodbye all you people, _

_There's nothing you can say, _

_To make me change my mind. _

_Goodbye._


End file.
